Balloons
Barefoot the children are running, their fists in the air.
They laugh a ticklish laughter, not the mind’s.
The strings they clutch are as thin as the air at this altitude.
What are they running from? Ask a forget-me-not.
Sunflowers read their passage from west to east.
The flowers are foreground: beyond them, the precipice.
A broom of a wind swishes across a footprint.
That little piggy was hearing, that little piggy was vision....
Decades, decades after my mother created me,
I make her a metaphor, an image to hear
In which the young are the old, and the bodies are minds.
She forgets she was listening just as I tell her the children
Have opened their hands. Time to say bye. The balloons,
Faceless and empty, are nodding their heads in ascent.
Links:
[1] https://www.ablemuse.com/v8/poetry/amit-majmudar/warning-sign?s=6bd883ffc19f2951a00e53ceb3563741
[2] https://www.ablemuse.com/v8/poetry/amit-majmudar/exiles?s=6bd883ffc19f2951a00e53ceb3563741